Howie Good
As mourners do,
I’ll cover the mirrors
before I go out
and still arrive in time
for the last showing.
The seats around me
will all be empty,
but toward the end,
when even the music stops
caring what happens next,
the heavy-set usherette
will prowl the aisles
of another gloomy day.
She’ll be there and then
she won’t, and she’ll shine
her stinging light in my face.
Howie Good is a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and is the author of eight poetry chapbooks. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net anthology. His first full-length book of poetry, Lovesick, is forthcoming from The Poetry Press of Press Americana.